tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 17 05:08:22 1996
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Re: thursday:today
- From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: thursday:today
- Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 05:08:22 -0700
I had written:
> >or if you want the second reading you can nicely illustrate the Type 5 noun
> >suffix for topics
> ><<qatlh maHvaD ja' ghaH'e'>>
Ken Traft responds:
> I am confused with the use of the topic suffix on "ghaH". I though that the
> topic suffix was used only on a subject following a verb pronoun?
Actually, your both right and wrong. While we most often see the suffix -'e'
used to deonote the subject when a pronoun is used as a verb, let's not forget
it's first canonical use as a topic marker. Arguably, in most cases explicitly
stating the pronoun (as I did using <<ghaH>> above) draws sufficient stress to
the topic, even more so when that pronoun is not in the third person and is
clearly redundant because of the apparent verb prefix (with third person verbs
and their lack of a prefix, the use of a pronoun at least tells you something
about the number of the subject, if not more). On the other hand, I'm a member
of the side that tries to avoid using pronouns as verbs, and as this subgroup is
in the minority (for pragmatic reasons I suspect) I chose to draw still *more*
attention to the subject through the use of the suffix -'e'.
This is probably just a stylistic difference, and I welcome the opinion of
others, especially current and past grammarians.
Lawrence
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